The Best Halloween Shows and Movies for Little Kids You Can Stream Right Now

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The Best Halloween Shows and Movies for Little Kids You Can Stream Right Now

Does your kid look like Scooby-Doo when they see monsters? This list will help.

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The people most excited about Halloween are little kids. For humans aged between 2.5 and 10 years old, there’s really nothing better. They get to dress up and go out—at night!—and strangers give them candy. There are leaf piles to jump in and fake skeletons to scream at. But it can also be a nightmare, if they get too scared. Halloween works best for young kids when it's a mixture of spooky and sweet, one that's light on the spooky and heavy on the sweet. Halloween movies and TV shows for kids this age need to follow a similar mix of saccharine and savory. For this age group, actual horror movies are totally wrong, and even some seemingly kid-friendly films like Ghostbusters are actually more nightmare-inducing than you might remember. To help new parents with young kids, we’ve compiled our favorite spooky-but-not-too-scary little-kid films that are available for streaming right now on Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu. We even added in a few for the tween set, too.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

The greatest thing about the first-ever Charlie Brown Halloween special is that you, your child, and your parents can all enjoy watching it together. The 22-minute episode, which first aired in 1966, evokes a strong nostalgia in adults, and still delights little kids hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive Great Pumpkin. During the episode, Linus tries with no avail to convince his friends that said pumpkin—who like Santa Claus brings toys and treats to good, true-believing kids on Halloween—is real. It also has all the Halloween classics: trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, pumpkin patches. The only thing missing is the Great Pumpkin itself. But hey, Linus still assures viewers, it will show up one day.

Room on the Broom (2012)

Adapted from the beloved kids' book of same name, this animated flick features Gillian Anderson as a very friendly witch who adopts animals on her journey through the night. It's not technically a Halloween-specific movie, but it's spooky and stars a witch, so we think it counts. The moral of this story is that kindness pays off. After having made room for many lonely animals on her broom, the witch and all her new friends fall into a bog where a dragon tries to eat her. Despite each being small, together the animals save their witch friend and are richly rewarded with a broom built for a brood. See? Told you it was good for kids.

Super Monsters Save Halloween (2018)

This Netflix original show, about a bunch of superhero monsters at a special preschool, is pretty adorable. All of their parents are well-known ghouls, and these youngsters are on a quest to master the special skills they inherited from them. The whole series is pretty on-brand for Halloween, but this particular special is tres specific and works hard to teach young kids that Halloween is nothing to be afraid of.

Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (1988)

If the premise of Super Monsters sounds slightly familiar, that's because way before they, or Netflix, existed, Scooby-Doo and the gang encountered a school full of the children of famous monsters. In this Hanna-Barbera TV movie from the late-'80s, Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy-Doo end up working at a girls’ school that seems normal by day but is filled with—you guessed it—ghouls at night. Hijinks, naturally, ensure.

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Monsters have a job, and that's to be scary. But in their regular life, they're loving and complicated, just like humans. Pixar's great attempt at neutralizing the ever-present childhood fear of Monsters is the perfect way to ease into the Halloween season. It's funny and exciting but teaches your child that things that look scary aren't always as spooky as the seem.

Gnome Alone (2017)

The supposedly scary bad guys of this Netflix original about a new girl at school and an army of garden gnomes? Weird little purple balls with mouths. But parents watching will recognize the real villain right away: the main character Chloe’s cell phone, which is never out of her grasp. Though Chloe is supposed to be a teenager in the movie, the only thing teen about her is her addiction to a cell phone and her penchant for rolling her eyes—both of which might inspire agita in parents watching with their kids. Otherwise, this film is perfectly suitable for kids ages 3 and up. And the purple creatures with teeth are kind of cute. There are some poop jokes, too.

Hocus Pocus (1993)

This modern-day Halloween classic has aged very well. It’s the tale of new-in-town Max, who accidentally reawakens three witches—Winifred, Sarah, and Mary—and with the help of his sister, his crush, and a kind black cat has to send them back to the afterlife before sun up. Along with being funny and frightening, the movie is also a good education in the history of witches in America and a good primer on how Halloween is celebrated in the US. While it might not be too scary for little kids—though there are some romantic undertones—it's possible the flick won't really hold their attention until they're around 7 years old or so.

The Monster Squad (1987)

This cult-classic horror comedy features all the Universal Monsters you grew up with—Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy—and five very geeky and determined kids who have to fight them off to save their town. These friends are delightfully obsessed with monster movies, which helps a lot when the stars of those flicks show up in search of an amulet. It’s a preteen story, and as such is probably best for that age group. There are also cigarettes and references to sex (including at least one unsavory word you might not want even a preteen to hear). But if that's what you're looking for, this one is a monster smash.